(2) Sun Mar 20 2005 19:20 PST:
In the antique store I saw a book with one of the best titles I've ever seen. I'll use wacky font sizes to try to convey the way the title looked on the cover:

Gold!...no gold

The book itself was some self-published autobiography of growing up in central California or something. I could tell it was self-published because the jacket copy told me that when I was done reading the book I would feel like I really knew the author and consider them a close friend. Only the self-published author would consider that the best use of jacket copy space. I don't know anyone who reads books to make friends with the authors, and I imagine non-self-published authors would be kind of creeped out about people who considered themselves your friends based on what they read in a book.

In a refreshing reverse of what's usually less creepy, this is less creepy if the author is dead. Then reading their stuff is the closest thing possible to actually making friends with them. I don't think the author of Gold!...no gold had that in mind, though.